 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the American Foundation for Equal Rights Conference call. All lines have been placed on Listen Only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Chad Griffin, Board President. Mr. Griffin, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, and thanks to all of you for calling. We have a very full call, so we're going to be brief and then move to your questions. I first want to congratulate the tremendous legal team today for putting together for this case, and particularly Theodore Butrus, Ted Butrus, who is on the call and is going to be speaking shortly, argued the case yesterday before Chief Judge Ware, and our two legal teams of Gibson Dunning Crusher and Boy Schiller and Flexner did a tremendous job yet again bringing about a deserved victory. As I said yesterday, it was my belief that the defendant interveners bigoted in homophobic motion will prove to be a real low point in the struggle for civil rights and full equality for gay and lesbian people. But today truly turned out to be a turning point, and this incredibly, sorry, this strongly worded opinion by Chief Judge Ware will be precedent-setting and truly advances equal rights and equal treatment for all Americans, including gay and lesbians. And with that, I will turn the phone over to the gentleman that I just congratulated on this victory, and that's Theodore Butrus. Go ahead, Ted. Thank you very much, Chad. Hello, everyone. This is a powerful ruling that makes clear that gay and lesbian judges are entitled to the same presumptions of fairness and impartiality as all other federal judges, and that rejects the false and unreasonable assumptions and stereotypes that proposition 8's proponents asserted in what I think really was a deeply offensive motion to begin with. I was very pleased to see that Chief Judge Ware talked about how the fact that, this is on page 8, the fact that when there's a question of equal protection and fairness in society, that's an interest that all citizens have the same stake in. It's not just this case. The Perry case is not just about equal rights for gay men and lesbians. It's for equality in society, which benefits everyone in society. I thought that was particularly a strong thing for the judge to say, and it's true. The court also focused on the fact that the proponents were really asking to put what the court called inordinate burdens on minority judges with these disclosure requirements and the intrusiveness that I talked about yesterday. And then on pages 18 and 19, the court talks about how important it is to the integrity of the judiciary to reject the arguments that the proponents made here. And finally, on the next page, on page 19, the last paragraph, Chief Judge Ware talked about how the proponents' motion really was based on presumptions that, in his words, all people in same-sex relationships think alike. And the notion that Chief Judge Walker and other gay judge couldn't put their personal status to the side and be fair is wrong. So I think this opinion is going to be in line with those decisions in the areas of gender, race, ethnicity, religious background that people will cite for many, many years in saying that gay judges, lesbian judges, are entitled to the same fairness and impartiality presumptions as all other judges. And that's a great development for society. Thank you, Ted. And with that, we'll open up Operator Two to questions. Certainly, the floor is now open for questions. If you do have a question, please press the number seven or the letter Q on your telephone keypad. Questions will be taken in the order they were received. If at any point your question has been answered, you may press seven or Q again to disable your request. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask that while posing your question, you pick up your handset to provide favorable sound quality. Please hold while we wait for the first question. It comes from Karen O'Kam. Karen, please state your question. Hi. Thanks, Ted. Hi, Chad. Do you think this ruling will have any impact on the California Supreme Court's opinion on standing? Karen, I think that, again, just sort of from the circumstances surrounding this case, I don't think that the proponents filing of this motion helped their situation. From a legal standpoint, this dealt with a completely different issue than their standing question. I just thought for them to come in and file this motion, that when they're standing and their status to participate in the case is highly questionable at this point to begin with, it certainly doesn't help the notion that they should be participating in the case. From a legal standpoint, it doesn't directly relate to those issues. But certainly, I don't think it helped. It helped put them in a very good light as the litigants who should be supporting California's interest, and supposed interest in this case when the Attorney General and the governor have said that they will stand by the decision that Chief Judge Walker made. It comes from Laura Earned. Laura, please state your question. Hi, I was wondering if this can be appealed to the Ninth Circuit. Laura, proponents may try to file a notice of appeal, but I think they will run into some of the same standing problems that they are confronting on the merits. Because at this point, once they go up on appeal, they're out of a court where there is an actual government participant in the case. In the district court, there still are because there's an injunction. So any appeal of this order is going to run smack into the same standing issues that the proponents of propositionary confront in the merit litigation. Okay, thank you. Sure. The next question comes from Bob Igelko. Bob, please state your question. I'm struggling to figure out exactly what standard he set and what he said about whether a judge who would marry or who had said publicly that he intended to marry would have a disqualifying conflict or would give an appearance of bias. It was a little opaque for me. Maybe I just missed something, but it seemed like he was saying that there was merely speculation here and that there was no duty to disclose under these circumstances. But I couldn't really tell what standards he was laying down and since he said that this is a precedent. Can you maybe decipher some of this? Yeah, I mean, I think Bob, he didn't go in and rule on some of the hypotheticals that he was asking me about and that came up yesterday, which is appropriate because federal courts aren't supposed to make advisory opinions on things that aren't present in the case. However, I think he laid down several standards. One, the judge's status here, the judge's sexual orientation is not a factor that can reasonably be viewed as calling into question the judge's impartiality. That is an exceedingly important principle and it follows the precedent that has been laid down in other areas including gender, race, ethnicity, and religious background. Second, the court rejected the amorphous disclosure requirements that proponents were suggesting that would require a judge in a marriage case, for example, or in other types of cases to take the bench and start disclosing and explaining their personal background, their views, their intentions. And as Judge Walker pointed out, I would judge where, Chief Judge Ware pointed out, that would really create problems in terms of the integrity of the judiciary, the trust that we have in judges to do justice by applying the law. And he really talks about that on page 18. So I think that those general principles rejecting this notion that status does bear on impartiality, number one. Number two, rejecting the notion that a judge has to disclose and disavow things and go down that road, both of those principles are very important. And in addition, Chief Judge Ware made very clear there's a presumption of impartiality. It's not the presumption that the proponents were asking for, which was a presumption of bias. And in no case has a court ever held that a federal judge is presumed to be biased unless they declare they're not biased. That to me was a special rule that the proponents developed that would apply in cases involving gay and lesbian judges, which obviously is completely inappropriate. Again, if you do have a question, please press 7 or Q on your telephone keypad. Again, that's 7 or Q. As we're waiting for the next question, I think as this year has turned out to be historic in terms of LGBT equality, and since the filing of our case, we now have four national polls that show support for marriage equality over 50 percent. So now a majority of Americans support marriage equality. This week, in addition to the historic ruling that came from Chief Judge Ware today, there was a decision that really went unnoticed yesterday in Federal Bankruptcy Court that I will let Ted speak to just briefly and specifically because I think it is an important decision that called out DOMA's unconstitutional and which 20 judges of the Federal Bankruptcy Court signed. In addition, I know many of you are writing and following the news in New York. The breaking news now is that Cuomo has introduced the Marriage Equality Bill, and it appears as though there's only one vote left to go to push that over. So we're obviously optimistic as many of our supporters and donors and AFRA members are involved in that effort in New York. So this has been a big week for full equality. Ted, I don't know if you have anything to say as it relates to that decision that came out late yesterday. To amplify what Chad said, it really is another important step in the Federal Courts in terms of momentum, in terms of precedent. The Court, for those of you who don't know about it, the Bankruptcy Judges in the Central District of California found that the Constitution precluded application of DOMA to a gay couple and restricting their ability to file a joint petition for bankruptcy. The Court relied on Chief Judge Walker's decision, on the GIL decision on DOMA that came down several months ago. And in addition to the judge presiding over the case, all 20, I think it's all 20 judges in the Bankruptcy Court here, signed the ruling, which I find, again, very powerful, very compelling. So this is a very good day for equality for all citizens, and in particular gay men and lesbians in America. Any further questions, Operator? It appears we have no further questions at this time. Excellent. Thanks to all of you. There were 30-plus folks who had joined this call. And those of you who need any follow-up questions, you know how to reach us here in the AFRA office. And we can put you in touch with any of the – with Ted directly or anyone else you're looking to speak to. Thanks for everyone's time on this day, and look forward to speaking with you soon as we near the final end of Proposition 8 in the months to come. Thanks, everyone. Well, pardon the interruption. This is the Operator. A question just came in. Would you like to take it? Okay, sure. Bill here. The next question comes from Morara Dolan. Morara, please take your question. Yeah, I apologize for coming in late on this. I'm just wondering, can protect marriage appeal this decision? What is sort of the legal details here in terms of how they would appeal this? Yeah, Morara, I think they could – this is Ted. How are you doing? Hi, Alex. They could try to appeal. They have a couple of problems. One, once they're up on appeal, they run into the same standing issues that they have with respect to the merits. Someone asked a question about this earlier, and I answered it, and I didn't make this other point. There's also just procedural difficulties, because this was a ruling on this motion in this procedural posture where the case is up on appeal. So I think they've got some significant problems here if they seek to appeal. And maybe they'll wise up and understand this is a bad road to travel down. Could they just reserve the right to bring it up later when all the other procedural issues are resolved, such as standing? I think they'd have to do it under the appellate rules within 30 days of the order the way you normally would because of the posture of this rule. I think they'll have to make their decision now. Although, as we saw with this motion, they're capable of lying in wait until it's an opportune time to take action. But I think they'd have to follow the usual rules. And obviously that – yeah, go ahead, Maura. The other quick question is just beyond this case, is this an important precedent in terms of openly gay judges deciding gay cases? Is apparently the first ruling on this subject, is that correct, on a gay judge deciding a gay rights case? That's correct, Maura. This is, I think, a very important precedent. It is in line with the decisions that came before in other areas, including race, ethnicity, gender. It is a very powerful statement that makes clear that gay men and lesbians are entitled to the same presumptions of fairness and impartiality as all other federal judges. Chief Judge Ware really made a point, too, of talking about how this – the principles that he relies on are principles that are crucial to the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary. The notion that judges can't be attacked, cannot be attacked based on their status, based on their membership in a minority group, has now been reaffirmed in the context of gay and lesbian judges. That is very important. I think people will be citing this decision for many years to come on these issues. And Maura, with respect to what the opponents do, obviously that's a good question to be posed to them. I think after seeing this motion that was filed, I speak for everyone in saying that nothing that they would do would surprise us at this point. As you know, this was the second judge in this case that they have attempted to get to recuse himself. So we look forward to how they would respond to all of you on that question. Okay, great. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Maura. Operator, any other questions? We have another question from Nick Garcia. Nick, please state your question. This is a question, I think, maybe more for Chad than Ted. But Chad, you know, we're getting to the height of Pride season throughout the nation. Can you kind of put this ruling and the course of AFR into context with Pride? Yeah, I mean, look, what I would say is, you know, Gay Pride Month has historic meaning. And it's a time of the year where gay and lesbian people and their friends and allies celebrate who they are. And it has had historical significance. And I think increasingly so, it can become a true celebration of full and complete equality under the law. We're not there yet. This past year, and as I said earlier, since the filing of this case, we now have a majority of Americans supporting marriage equality. We have numerous states across the country who have full federal equality. Hopefully by the end of this week, New York will have marriage equality. We are very close. Prop 8 is hanging by a very thin thread that has unraveled to its core. And perhaps within months, we will see Prop 8 erased from the book. Our nation's capital now has gay marriage. The administration and the president has indicated their unwillingness to defend DOMA as constitutional. The decision that came yesterday, the end of don't ask, don't tell, I think we have had a historic year. And it is my hope that a year from now, and that next Pride, Pride 2012, could be a year that we just might be able to celebrate full federal equality under the law. And that would be a tremendous celebration and perhaps a Pride month, unlike we've ever seen before. You know, just a quick follow-up. I was reading a couple of posts around the Internet that said, we actually might not get a full decision on Prop 8 all the way to the Supreme Court until 2013. Are you guys thinking differently now? We have always been optimistic. I mean, if you look at this case, it hasn't even been a year since we won the case. The case and the trial, the federal judge expedited the trial. We had a decision that will be a year in August. We won, as everyone on this call knows, in a sweeping historic decision that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Our court system, as we all know, allows for the losing party when they have standing to appeal. The defendants, the official defendants in this case, the Governor and Attorney General, agreed with the decision and decided not to appeal. The Ninth Circuit expedited the appeal. We have already been to the Ninth Circuit and had oral arguments. They have referred a very technical question with regards to standing to the California Supreme Court. That court has indicated that in September they will hear those arguments and due to the fact that it is a very simple and direct and uncomplicated legal matter, it's our belief and hope that they will act quite quickly and give their answer to the Ninth Circuit and that we would move very quickly. So it's our hope and belief that we are months away from seeing Prop 8 and Judge Walker's decision realized and that all Californians will have the ability to marry. Thank you. Any other question, Operator? We have a question from Ian Lovett. Ian, please say your question. Hi. I just want to know if we can clarify that this is definitely the first ruling directly on gay judges ruling on gay cases. This is Ted Boucher. As far as we know, as far as the judge had the same assessment and the other side as well, the first time this issue has been decided in the federal court system for sure. Okay, great. I think that's important because in literally every historic civil rights battle we've had in this country, this issue has come up where those who are seeking to stop the quality try to disqualify a judge from the group whose rights are at stake in the case and the courts keep saying, absolutely not, we trust our judges to be fair and impartial and that's what Chief Judge Wehr found here. Okay, great. Thank you. You bet. Any other questions, Operator? No questions at this time. Okay, thanks everyone for your time on this important matter and how to reach us if you have any follow-up questions. Thanks again and congratulations to Ted Boucher and the tremendous legal team that AFER has put together on this effort. Congratulations and thanks everyone for your time. Thanks everyone. Bye. Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you.